around March 21 one can be yours

Filling brother's shoes?

The boy loves his dinosaurs

Weeks

It has been weeks since I've posted anything other than pictures. I was hoping to do better this year! When this much time passes, I can't ever think of what to write about. Blogging every day, I know what to write about. That day. Every few weeks? I have no idea.
Isaac turned 9 yesterday. He is having a few friends spend the night tonight at a hotel with David. I was thrilled that's what he wanted to do. I'll be taking pizza and a cookie cake over, but that's all I have to do. They'll swim after that and I bought a new game that looked like fun.
We have CPA next week. I'd hoped to sing Clausen's "Prayer" but with all the school missed from snow and the extra week I missed with stomach bugs... it won't be happening. I pulled two songs from last semester and found a fairly easy up tempo piece to do. We only have to do 2 b/c of the snow but will still have to do three at state... so I really want to do 3 at region in order to get comments from the judges that will help prepare for state. They are sounding great. My mom came to hear them yesterday and she thought they were as great as I do. But she knows what she's talking about... I thought I might just be biased :) I'm so proud of them.
I'm ready for the session to be over. I'm really tired of David not being around. I knew it would be like this, but that doesn't make 'those days' any easier to deal with. My mom has been coming to give me some relief thank goodness or I do believe I'd have a nervous breakdown. She normally keeps Levi when here, but yesterday I took him to Ramona at church as usual and she worked on some things here at home. Like the garage... and the bonus room. Major help there. It is so hard to get anything done... blogging including.
And kids are now screaming so I must go :) But hey, I got SOMETHING typed!

Meet Solfege

I'm always telling my choirs to 'sing like a fish'...so I bought a mascot. See how nice and round his mouth is? He drops his jaw SO WELL too :)

Becca Sanders
forgive typos- sent from phone

yey! Thank you Kim Harper!

Settling in

What's for dinner?

I experimented. I have no idea if this will be any good. A week or so ago I boiled 2 whole chickens for the meat. I'd added salt, pepper and herbes de provence to the water. I like the ease of chicken breasts, but hate the texture and flavor (the lack thereof). I had leftover rice from last night's dinner and a bunch of quinoa I'd cooked in the chicken broth from those whole birds.

So, tonight's dinner consisted of those things. I mixed the rice, chicken, and quinoa together (it filled 2 casserole dishes at this point) then added a can of cream of mushroom, cream of chicken, broccoli and cheese, and a big can of ro tel (store brand) and about a tablespoon of herbes de provence and some salt and pepper. Mixed that all together, added the rice/chicken/quinoa and put it into two casserole dishes. Covered one and put in freezer. Added some grated cheese and crushed saltines to the other, then poured a stick of melted butter over it. Cuz "with enough butter, anything is good" right?

It's cooking... I'll let you know.

The verdict...

Would be better without so much quinoa. Quinoa is really good for you, but I should probably add it to rice things in a 3 to 1 ratio. It was the other way around in this dish. I had also put some sliced almonds in it to get rid of them. Forgot about that addition. Thought the cheese might be too much, but it wasn't. I'll add more to the other one before cooking it.

I forgot to post about Levi's first haircut.

I've trimmed it at home, but this was his first 'real' haircut.

I love Pigtails and Crewcuts. They have fun and do a GREAT job with little ones. Elijah got a much needed haircut too.

Almost done.

Finished result... the bangs are a bit crooked. I trimmed them a bit more after we got home. I would have had her fix it in the shop had I noticed.

And Elijah.

Becca Sanders
forgive typos- sent from phone

Playing in the snow of course. Abigail is wearing my ski suit from 9th grade. Dug it out of the attic this morning.

Eating snow.

No more gap jeans!

Been wanting to try this, finally did. My jeans gap at the back. I don't care what size I am or they are... I have this problem. They fall down. I don't like wearing belts. I cut small holes on the inside of the waistband. Inserted 1/4 inch elastic, cut about 3/4 the length of where I was putting it.

Sewed up the holes and stitched down the ends of the elastic. So it looked like this when finished.

And this when on.

No gap and they stay up without a belt!!

Ain't she purty?

It's been a long week. Tuesday was one of those "Calgon take me away" days, only instead of a hot bath at the end of a very long, cold, and wet day... I got a cold bath instead. It rather summed up the day. Nothing like longing to get away to a hot tub only to be rewarded with tepid water, knowing if you didn't take it anyway, you wouldn't get one at all.

Not worth rehashing the details. Just your typical mom of 5 stuff with one kid having an issue after another and David not being home. Even Abigail... she got a round brush stuck in a big chunk of her hair. Ended up having to cut it out after wasting tons of time trying to get it out (she has so much hair, you can't even tell). 9:00 Mia started meowing non-stop. I knew she was going to have her babies that night, but all I could think of was sleep. I shut her in the office and hoped for the best.

Next morning I went in there and only heard Mia meowing. Didn't see any evidence of kittens. But after she left the office... I saw a lone kitten clinging to the side of a box. It was the "option B" of the birthing choices she had. I had a plastic tub under a table with a sheet folded in it, heater placed far enough away to keep it warm but not blow on it, blanket over part of the table for privacy. She chose the box that 18 rolls of toilet paper was delivered to us from amazon.com 'subscribe and save.' It was up on its side with one flap open... it was this flap the kitten clung to. I heard them after Mia's meowing left the room. So quiet, but definitely letting you know they were there and not happy about being alone. I told Abigail to go get a blanket, took out the old stuff in the box under the table, put a new blanket in the box, and slid the kittens into it. They were so tiny!! Nothing but fur and bones. Mia stood by my side as I fixed them in the new box. She seemed to appreciate it and climbed right in after I finished. She had cleaned up ALL the mess from delivery. I was amazed... and grateful I could toss the box. I had nothing to wash. Even the box was as clean as she could have gotten it.

I read you weren't supposed to hold them until they were a week old. I was going to try to resist. But I couldn't. And then I read that it was good to hold them from the start so they are used to it. Apparently some kittens are jittery and afraid of people b/c they AREN'T held as babes. No worries with these kittens. They've been held by all of us. Even Levi has been in my lap while I've held them. They will be well socialized for a family with kids!

They are fat and round now. Precious rolly polly bellies. Mia is such a good mom... and so tolerant of us. Elijah named them Artie, Belle, and Coconut (or Lightsaber, not sure on that last one). Just asked him for clarification... this time he said "Justin Bieber." ha

Had yet another snow day yesterday. School was let out before it hit. It did hit, but it didn't do much to the roads. Abigail and I went to JCPenney last night. Waiting for it to warm up a bit and then we're all headed out somewhere to look for a storage shed. Our garage is full of campaign stuff. We need a place to put all that stuff.

Supposed to get more tomorrow night and even more Tuesday night. JOY. I already dropped one level 5 piece from the planned CPA music. Even if they say we only have to do 2 instead of the normal 3... I may have to drop the other level 5 piece and do 2 fairly easy ones. All the snow days and all the sick days I had to take :( makes it tough to get stuff learned. But, I'm not giving up yet. I love "Prayer" and want so badly to do it. Will keep moving forward with that piece even if we can't do it at CPA. We can do it at graduation/baccalaureate.

3 kittens

Way to go mama

Terrible teething

Clayton and Abigail

Levi and I are gonna run around in rainy Cabot

Last pre braces pic